Is Torture Justified?

Why is it immoral for the nazis to want to protect the fatherland, and use whatever means necessary to do so?

Because clearly the ends don't always justify the means, dipshit.

(Disclaimer: Yes, I know... But nazis are a great shorthand for evil and everyone is familiar with the mechanisms they used. Kill them all and let Godwin sort them out, I say!)

Well, believe it.  When you can accept that those who disagree with you aren't necessarily traitors, then we can have a civil discussion.  Otherwise, no matter what I say, I know what the end result is going to be: you will get on your moral high horse and call me a traitor, Nazi, etc., etc.

I expressed a disbelief that any patriotic American would want our country to act like a dictatorship.  You disagreed without explanation.  Why don't you tell me how you justify sadism, savagery, criminal assault and violations of federal and international law in your own mind?

First, thanks for actually increasing the signal-to-noise ratio around here in this discussion.

I can see why people would use it, in the abstract, anyway. If hundreds of people would die, and the only way to stop that would be to torture, I would do that. I would likewise perform an abortion, or have gay sex, or do any number of things that are against my moral code. I also hope that I would be strong enough to give my life in that situation, to throw myself onto the grenade, so to speak. If government officials are scared that innocent people will die, they will often over-react and do things that are outside of the law.

In the same way, would it be moral to highjack a helicopter to drop food and water into the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina? I'd say it would, because in that case, considerations of law are superceded by considerations of people's lives, and if the Bush administration thought that they were protecting American innocents from terrorism, then there is explanation for their actions beyond sadism and savagery.

Yes, absolutely.  It is simply the old conundrum "do you steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family" cast in a different light.

From the content of the memos that were released, it seems that the Bush administration wanted to make a case to invade Iraq, and used torture to provide evidence for a link to Al-Qaeda that wasn't there.

This is not true.  Have you read the memos released by Obama?  They are technical legal memos written in response to a request by CIA to determine if the techniques mentioned met the legal threshold of torture as defined by federal law.  They didn't try to make any case whatsoever about whether we should invade Iraq or not.

Nowhere in the memos is it even contemplated that the purpose of the interrogations was to ascertain whether Saddam had WMD.  Nowhere.

Incidentally, and this may surprise many of you, the Senate made it clear that when they ratified the UN anti-torture treaty, that the Senate's definition of torture was deliberately construed to be narrow.  Why, you ask?  Because torture is not just any old act of random violence; torture is an extreme act, and not everything qualifies.

I don't think we should have tea and crumpets with Bin Laden if we do catch him, but not everyone we took into custody is a high-ranking terrorist. Most are just foot soldiers, some fanatical, and some wrongly accused. For most of the terrorists we did catch, they have no useful intelligence beyond their personal info and the info about their immediate group, just like one of our soldiers doesn't have concrete info beyond his unit and himself. There are also the negative side effects to consider, such as how our soldiers will be treated when they get captured, or how well we will get information peacefully.

You are absolutely correct, which is why the "torture memos" made it very clear that the interrogation techniques were only to be used on "high value detainees".  Nobody has ever suggested that your typical rank-and-file jihadist should be waterboarded.

Good, you are starting to make actual arguments, instead of urging for me to be thrown out of the country.  We are making progress after all, even if it took far too long to achieve it.

It would be helpful if you could provide some links demonstrating that the statements that you say were made by Mueller and others really did mean what you claim that they mean.

And there are a couple of different issues intertwined here.

The first issue is whether or not the so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' constitute torture.  Legally, torture is defined by federal statute.  The so-called 'torture memos' were the legal opinions, from the Justice Department (the agency responsible for issuing legal opinions), requested by the CIA, on whether certain techniques, conducted only under certain circumstances and only applied to selected individuals, legally constituted torture according to the law.  If you actually read the memos, the authors conclude that with very big qualifications, that those techniques do not legally constitute torture.  They cite the UN convention against torture, the view of the US Senate when it ratified the convention, the definition of torture in federal statute, and the (relatively meager) case law concerning torture.  It's a scholarly opinion, not some partisan hack job.  I've read the memos and, to be honest, the arguments look pretty persuasive to me.  If you disagree, then you should cite some legal opinion on why.  In this respect, the opinion of the FBI or the military don't really matter - sure listen to what they have to say, but they aren't the ones with the duty to offer legal opinions.

The second issue is whether we should have used 'enhanced interrogation techniques' at all, legal or not.  Well, some are pretty inocuous so I wouldn't have a real problem with those.  But even with the more extreme ones: Nobody is claiming that you should do it 'just for fun' or 'because they deserve it'.  Nobody is claiming that you should do it on everyone.  And nobody is claiming that it should be standard practice.  If they are done at all, it should be done only in a time of war, only on a 'high-value detainee', and only if there is a great and urgent necessity to obtain information that you know ahead of time that the detainee possesses.  The anarcho-libertarian within me would agree with you and say that the power to waterboard is too much power for a state to possess, that it will inevitably be used on civilians for illegitimate purposes.  But then the adult in me is willing to recognize that morality in wartime is not the same as morality in peacetime.  It is a mistake to apply normal peacetime rules to wartime; otherwise every soldier would be prosecuted for mass murder.  To the extent that wartime conditions demand it, and with the conditions given above, then I would begrudgingly say that it's okay.  I wouldn't be happy about it, I would lament the world we live in which makes fighting such a war necessary, but I have to be a realist.  I would want it all to be strictly limited and well documented and supervised so that everybody understands that if they cross the line they will be held accountable.

The third issue is if 'enhanced interrogation techniques' are effective.  Well, the CIA claims that enhanced interrogation of Zubaydah led to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the "20th hijacker".  I am just suspicious generally of the claim that "torture never works".  If it never worked then you wouldn't need to prohibit it - people just wouldn't do it, it would be a waste of time!  I'm willing to concede, of course, that it may not be optimally effective compared to other non-coercive techniques and of course I'd want to see every single non-coercive technique tried before even contemplating an enhanced interrogation technique.

And I would be a little hesitant on relying solely on FBI Agent Ali Soufan's account in your opposition to enhanced interrogations.  As you are undoubtedly aware, the CIA and FBI have been engaged in a decades-long pissing match.  And, doing a little bit of research on Soufan, it appears that he has good reason to be very angry personally with the CIA.  I am not sure how much of his account is dispassionate truth, and how much represents his personal animosity against the CIA.  Oh, and Soufan incidentally gave money to Obama's campaign.  So, in addition, how much represents his dissatisfaction with Bush?  He of course has a valuable opinion but it is one of many valuable opinions.